Thursday, November 8, 2012

School Week: Note taking 2


Thank you for spending the week with me talking about school organization :)
I find it so hard to stay on top of things between my full-time job and my distance classes that i think it's super important to be as prepared as possible. I'm sure my system is not that good and will evolve during the year, but i hope it might help you anyway!

The course i received is structured in such a way that you have a bunch of exercises to do after you've read through all the 125 pages of theories of the book. I showed previously how i get through that much reading in 10 short days. For me it involves a lot of note-taking, as it's the only for me to remain focus on what i'm reading. I need to write stuff to remember it, i guess that's also why i'm a paper-planner user :) But i do realize that these notes are not very useful in themselves: they don't condensate the book into what i really need to know, i won't be studying from my exams from them. They help me get to the point where i can start working on the exercises though.
So now i have pages and pages of very plain notes, and i start the exercises portion of the book.


I'll dive into the exercises, flipping through my notes to the appropriate section to look up formulas, definitions... and then i'll add my own remarks on my notes, i'll highlight what i now understand to be an important aspect of the class. Also, while working on my notes, I might need to search for some more info from other sources, which i'll add to the same notes.
However, i do not keep the exercises. If they exemplify an important demonstration for instance, i'll write that directly in the notes in front of the relevant section.


So now i have heavily annotated, highlighted, and scribbled on notes. I also have completely blank parts. It's now easy to know what parts to focus on and what has been harder for me to get and required more research on my end.

Now onto the interesting stuff, what stationery do i use! I use the same brand of highlighters as before, only different colors: pink for important to know by heart (such as here the formulas for instance), yellow for important concepts, green for examples. Post-it flags help me recognize important sections. And sadly that's it for now :D

I'll see you tomorrow to show how i use these notes to prepare exams!
And go participate in the poll, of course :D

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